The moment a fight broke out in test room three, Caps practically jumped at the chance to stop it. He ran out of the office and downstairs to the holding cells. Colonel Dillo could have stopped the commotion himself without needing to get up from his seat, but the Major seemed excited at the opportunity to be useful, so how could he take that away from him. That would be like robbing a dog of his opportunity to fetch. A chuckle from another screen pulled his attention away from test room three. In room five, one of the children seemed to be cheering up the other who was suffering from a near panic attack. The gesture itself was nice but not worth much notice, except for how the boy was doing it… Colonel Dillo pulled the screen so close to himself that he could nearly see the vibrating specks of light that formed it from nothing. It zoomed its perspective in on the boy's hands. Dancing on his palms was a cartoonish frog thing in a bowtie. Dillo blinked. Each one of these children had a Halo, sure, but they haven’t received any apps or instruction on how to use them. And most importantly, they were under a limiter. They should have absolutely no means of accessing Artima. Yet somehow, this child had cast a figment. Colonel Dillo watched the little frog pump its silly legs. Its balance was inconsistent and it fell over itself followed by a series of croaks. The croaks sounded impressively accurate compared to the structure of the thing, but critiquing the boy's form on creating the impossible seemed trivial while it was achieving its designed purpose. The child that was near panic had calmed and was now wiping away his tears and laughing with the other boy. Colonel Dillo leaned back and rubbed his eyes, a little grin curling at the edges of his lips. Oh General, what are you up capturing boys like these? He scanned over the other screens for any more oddities. The boys in test room one seemed to be in a heated staring contest, while the boys in test room two were playing with one of their animated paintings. The boys in test room four were either playing musical chairs or simply enjoyed pushing each other out of their seats. The boy in test room five tossed the frog-like figment up where it exploded into a dozen of, well, decent attempts at butterflies. They looked more like smiley faces with rainbow wings, but it was still a figment transition. These children had a surprising aptitude for Casting, or at least that child specifically. Him and that rowdy one… A glass of vodka poured itself and floated to Dillo’s lips as he looked back at the screen showing test room three. The boy there had undoubtedly created the ball that he was throwing. They were casting accidentally, willing their imaginations to existence through sheer thoroughness. Maybe the tests that he had in store could use a bit of… enhancing. Major Caps entered test room three on-screen just as the boy threw the ball. There was a loud thump and grunt as the ball struck the Major in the privates and he dropped to his knees. Colonel Dillo spat his vodka through the screens, the millions of droplets refracting the light into a rainbow of mist. Colonel Dillo’s cackling laughter drowned out the Major’s groans. *** Four hundred and twenty-seven bounces had passed since the tall old guy showed up, got wrecked, and left. Satch had calmed down a bit after the man told them that they were not in any danger here. But the statement got Jace excited. He hadn’t ever considered their situation to be dangerous. There was no threat. But after the man appeared, there was a new variable to their situation. The ball smacked the wall that had disappeared and reappeared. There was space outside of this one. What else was out there? Saying that Jace and Satch were not in danger here insinuated that there was danger elsewhere. Jace caught the ball and dropped it as he walked to the wall between the frames. He wanted danger now. “Finally,” Satch said. He had been able to speak since around three hundred bounces ago, and Jace almost wished he’d kept wheezing. “No more bouncing, it's driving me insane.” “You started out insane,” Jace said, “and I told you, I was using it to measure time.” He placed his hands on the wall. It felt no different from the others. Some kind of thick white plastic. “And what good would that do besides making time pass agonizingly slow?” Satch said as he rubbed his legs. He’d stopped the scratching after Jace apologized for taking their game a bit too far. But apparently, he was still compelled to touch himself. Maybe Satch wasn’t the right name. Shake and rub, Shub? No, it doesn’t matter, Satch had already stuck. Jace knocked on the wall and pressed his ear against it. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for but there must have been a way that the wall opened. “What are you doing now?” Satch asked. “I want to open this wall back up.” “What, why? The man said that we’re safe here.” Jace raised an eyebrow at Satch. “And you trust him? He could have been the one who put us here.” He returned his attention to the wall. After a stretch of silence, Jace looked at Satch again. Whatever fragile base held his calmness had shattered. He was back to scratching now. Maybe Jace shouldn’t have said that. “Dammit, you’re right!” Satch exploded, “he could have said that to keep us compliant while they get us ready for who-knows-what!” He ran and pushed Jace away from the wall and pressed his palms against it. “We need to get out of here--!” Satch fell forward as the wall fell apart into millions of specks of dull light. He caught himself on the ground and threw himself back up, suddenly dumb with shock. They both just stood there looking through the opening for a moment. “Satch! You did it!” Jace cheered as he pushed the boy out of the way to see a hallway that stretched to either side. Right across from the opening was the number “4” printed on the wall. “Satch?” Satch said, confused. He pushed Jace back so that he could also see. “Yeah, that’s your name,” Jace said as he pushed Satch out into the hall. Satch gave a frightened yelp but stood his ground as his head whipped back and forth inspecting the new space. After seeing nothing of immediate threat he looked at Jace. “Wait, you know my name?” “Yup,” Jace said as he strolled into the hallway, “and my name’s Jace.” The hall was about the length of three of their rooms and it had numbers on the walls that were each as large as Satch. The number ‘four’ was right across from the opening to their room and the number ‘five’ was to the right of it before the hall ended at a solid wall. To the left were ‘two’ and ‘one,’ and a staircase leading up. Jace felt his heart speed up with excitement. He dropped a hand on Satch’s shoulder. “Nice work, Satch.” “Uh, yeah,” he said, looking back at the opening of the room, bemused. “It was nothing.” Jace started towards the staircase and once Satch noticed, he darted after him and pulled him back by the arm. Jace reacted by spinning his arm and reversing the grip, then he swung his other fist to counterattack. Satch deflected the punch and spun his arm to reverse the grip again. It all happened before the boys knew what they were doing. “Wait!” Satch cried. “Don’t pull me like that,” Jace said as he yanked his arm free from Satch’s grip. “There’s nothing to wait for, let's go.” “B-but it could be dangerous up there! We have no way of knowing what we’re walking into!” “Yeah, exactly.” “Aren’t you scared?!” “No,” Jace’s face scrunched as if biting into something sour. “What do you wanna do instead? Go back in the room? You’re the one that got us out here. Show some backbone and let's go explore.” “Why would I show my backbone? What does that even mean?” Jace had no idea what it meant. “It doesn’t matter, c’mon, let’s go.” Jace took a few steps and noticed that Satch wasn’t following. Well, if the boy’s primary motivator was fear… “Ya know, we probably weren’t supposed to leave that room or break that door. Do you really want to wait around to get punished?” That did the trick. Satch clenched his jaw and followed. It boggled Jace’s mind how scared Satch looked. Why wasn’t he excited? There was no way of knowing what kind of things they would find. That was the opposite of boring! Since both boys started in the same situation together, shouldn’t they see it the same way? But for some reason, it was like Satch wanted to be bored. “Stop being scared, already,” Jace said, waving a hand as if to dispel the shivering boy’s fear, “as long as we cover each other's backs we can take on anything,” “Cover your back with what?” Why do you keep talking about backs?” “It’s a figure of speech, Satch. How do you not know that?” “How do you know that? And how do you know my name, anyway?” “I guess I’m just smarter.” “That doesn’t make any sense!” “Of course not, you’re not smart enough.” Satch kicked Jace’s leg, causing him to trip himself. Jace fell into a roll and sprung back to his feet, facing his assailant. “Oh,” Jace’s eyebrows raised, “so you wanna play again? Fine, I’ll even let you start with that one point.” Satch was about to respond, but something caught his attention beyond Jace, and the color drained from his face. He tried to say something but all that came out was a sound like a squeak toy stuck in his throat. Jace turned to see the staircase disappearing behind a wall weaving itself into place like a knit sweater of cement. Jace lunged for the remaining opening at its center but its weaving sped up, and he hit a solid wall. “No!” Satch yelled. “We need to get to that staircase!” Jace rubbed his sore shoulder. Oh, now you want to?